The Met Office on Tuesday released data from hundreds of monitoring stations worldwide showing that the global surface temperature has risen significantly over the last 150 years.
Actual data shows this. I know that temperatures declined from the 1940s through the 1970s (hence the new ice age climate change scare back then), but we're talking about temperatures rising since 1850 according to the release!
Kill our economy! Turn over all political power to Al Gore so he'll save us! I want to live, damn it!
Just where is that cloth tote bag I got as a present ten years ago?!
Wait. Did they say temperatures have been rising since 1850? Why does that year seem so important?
Oh yeah:
The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after a warmer era known as the Medieval Warm Period. While not a true ice age, the term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[1] Climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. Some sources confine the Little Ice Age to approximately the 16th century to the mid-19th century.[2] It is generally agreed that there were three minima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.
If you start your trend analysis at the end of a cooling period, of course you are going to show temperatures rising since then.
So Mr. Gore, give me back the keys. I guess I'm not willing to let your crazed minions drive the economy over a cliff, after all.
Oh, and I do apologize for the recent flurry of climate change related posts. I've always felt free to rant about the issue from time to time given that it was an issue that touches on foreign policy, given how often we were beaten about the head and shoulder over failing to address it (notwithstanding the inconvenient truth that global temperatures did not rise during the Bush administration!). But my God, this is truly a target-rich environment since Climategate. Grant me life's little pleasures.
